International trade imperatives are giving impetus to conversion to metrics from English measurements, while architects and engineers continue to do their work with both modes of measurement.

U.S. measurement isolation might end by 2010 as a European Union directive mandates that all packages imported into the EU have metric-only labeling.

Europe is "prohibiting any packages that have other than metric units. They want everything to be one customary system of measurement so these packages can travel freely throughout the EU," said Ken Butcher, the U.S. Commerce Department's point man on metrics.

Every label redesign is an added expense for manufacturers, but the European Union represented 21.8 percent of U.S. exports in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"The Department of Commerce estimates that about 20,000 jobs are created for every $1 billion worth of exports, and you can't export inch/pound products to places where they use metric," said Lorelle Young, president of the nonprofit U.S. Metric Association.

Imperial: When it comes to local engineers and architects, the English system — also called imperial measurement or the standard system — continues to remain on equal footing with metrics.

"We use both standard and metric. We're probably 50/50 right now," said Timothy Fleming, vice president and chief operating officer of Mark Thomas & Co., an engineering company.

The company does state Transportation Department work, for which everything has to be metric.

"There is no problem. It is a learning curve," Fleming said. "The challenges come when you are trying to acquire right-of-way land. Some of the title companies have been slower to recognize the metric systems than others, particularly since most of the deed information is in imperial units."

Construction's foot soldiers are sometimes vexed by the metric conversion.

Conrad Bridges, vice president of HDR Architecture Inc., recalled a bridge job of C.C. Myers Inc. "The plans were done in meters, millimeters and kilograms. Many of the carpenters had never dealt with millimeters, measuring out the forms and putting everything together.

"They took away all their imperial tape measures and gave them the metric tape measure and told them to use it," Bridges said. "It took them a short time to get accustomed to it but once they did, they found it was a heck of a lot simpler."

But for HDR tech Alissa Doljanin, who worked in Australia, U.S. engineering and architectural firms have never really used the metric system.

"Everything in Australia was in the real metric system. Here we have the state that takes inches and then converts it into metric," she said, rather than starting with a metric measure.

"It amazes me that the entire aerospace industry does everything in standard units," said Dennis Johannes, assistant director of the Division of Measurement Standards of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

The Metric Association's Young said most aircraft parts, components and final products are made to imperial standards, and are very expensive to change. Everything has to be certified and tested to change a design.

Highway to metrics: Hoping to move the marketplace with the government's multibillion-dollar buying power, the 1988 Metric Usage Act mandated that all federal highway and building projects had to use metric units.

"We had a construction education council that was composed of public and private people, that represented most of the federal agencies that did substantial construction," said William Brenner, vice president of The National Institute of Building Science. "We had manufacturers, architects, engineers. Probably about half were federal personnel like the Federal Highway Administration, General Services Administration, Army, Navy, Bureau of Prisons, NASA, many agencies that do a lot of construction."

Young said that back then the states' departments of transportation were going metric and the American Association of State and Highway Officials were excited about it. States talked with each other so they could share information and save as much time and trouble in the planning as they could.

But some contractors hired by a state for a highway project balked at going metric, Young said. Contractors put the pressure on state officials to kill the requirement. And that took away from the state's department of transportation's ability to comply.

"That's what happened," Young said. "There's no big move to go backwards, just some powerful companies, living in the dark ages who don't want to switch."

About 85 percent of money from the Federal Highway Administration goes to states for highway construction. A change in the law in 1998 made using metrics on highway projects a state's option.

Without the federal stick, of the more than 40 states that were metric certified almost all reverted back to imperial units.

California is one of a handful of states that still mandates metric for state building and highway construction.

A package conundrum: Statutes will need to play a role in metric packaging, experts say.

"I've got three stores within about 20 miles of my house that import small amounts of products from Europe, that are only available in metric," the Commerce Department's Butcher said. "In some states, under federal law, it's illegal to sell those.

Butcher, the government metric czar, said he's working to amend the federal Fair Packaging Labeling Act.

The U.S. Fair Packaging Labeling Act was amended in 1992 to require both metric and inch/pound units on most product packaging. Amending the act to permit metric-only labeling on packages will allow manufacturers to sell those packages both in retail stores here and abroad in anticipation of the EU's Jan. 1, 2010, deadline.

California is a leader in metrics labeling.

"It could cost California companies more to set up for dual-packaging or segregation to meet EU 2010 labeling requirements," said Johannes of the state Division of Measurement Standards. "In areas where the federal government doesn't mandate that, we allow metric-only labeling."

Silent growth: While Americans aren't pumping gas by the liter, they are buying their liquor and soft drinks in metric units. Food may be sold by the ounce, but all the nutritional information is in metric units.

"Things have really changed with the metric system in the last 10 years. If you listened to the president speak before the United Nations or Colin Powell speak to Congress they were talking about liters of anthrax. People are using the metric system so much more," Butcher said.

Sept. 11 may have given the metric system another little push, with subsequent international dissemination of data taking place in metric units, he said. And medical data are being switched over to metric to be exchanged in massive medical studies around the world.

"Seventy percent of major corporations use it in some aspect of their operation, maybe 30 percent of small businesses do," Young said. "They're pulled into it by export needs or by being the supplier of a larger company and needing to meet the specification for parts."

All-metric future? For the faithful, conversion to metrics can't come soon enough. For the skeptical, the switch seems a long-running joke.

"We can't stay in inch/pounds," Young said. "Not if we want to sell to the world, unless we want our economy to go completely in the toilet."

"One of my professors asked me the other day what I did, and I told her and she laughed saying, 'I thought we were going to do that 30 years ago. You're still working on that?' " Butcher said.

Brenner, of The National Institute of Building Science, can foresee only one way America will turn completely metric in a hurry.

"The Martians are going to land next year and impose metric on everyone," he laughed.